Salvation Road: A Post Apocalyptic Delight

Over the past couple months I have put down the video game controller and have picked up another really cool hobby, board games. It started with the game Pandemic, which I’ll talk about in a later post, but the whirlwind of new games I have picked up lead me to one of current favorites, Salvation Road. Check out my unboxing below:

Salvation Road is a post apocalyptic looting/survival gaming where the only objective is to fill your truck with supplies in hopes of making your way to Salvation. In your way are hordes of marauders who are swarming your compound as you are trying to load up you truck, as well as bad guys at various locations wounding you as you search for fuel, ammo, meds and food.

What drew me to the game first of all was the artwork. Every bit of detail from the game board, which looks like someone was scribbling all over an end of the world style map, to the location cars that are Polaroid photos you place on the map. Even the art on the game pieces are particularly well done. This was the first game in my collection that I had to punch out pieces. I felt this process to be a very calm and zen moment. Something about punching out each little piece of the game I’m about to play really increased the anticipation to play. There are even custom dice for this game that deal out damage to your player, but look really cool. There were so many little pieces in fact that I made a trip to Michael’s, a store I rarely set foot in by myself, and found this fantastic organizer for all the pieces.

I have played this game 5 or 6 times and each game brings on new challenges due to the number of combinations of Hero’s and Survivors. Each person playing get’s a Hero, someone who has an extra special ability like gathering extra resources, taking extra moves or being able to take more damage. You also required to take a long a Survivor, someone who will bring you down with abilities that work against you. Abilities like making too much noise and drawing in more bad guys, getting hurt each time they move or delaying other players just for being in the presence of a Survivor. How nice of them!

After playing the game a number of times you learn to just accept the disabilities the Survivors have and find a way to use them to your advantage. After everyone takes their turn it’s time to deal out the damage, rolling dice with wound marks on them for each person outside of the base camp. After that you pull an Apocalypse card, which is definitely as friendly as it sounds. This card will instantly spawn a number of marauders (bad guys) to your base and potentially inflict more pain on your players.

RIP Emily

If and when you take damage you need to make a hard choice in the game. Do you use the supplies you gathered for, supplies that which you will need to pay the toll down Salvation Road, for yourself? Using a med kit to heal your wounds will keep you alive another round but will leave you with one less resource for the end. Using ammo to kill off some of the bad guys is a good thing especially because once your base is surrounded by all the bad guys in the game, you lose. However, one stop on Salvation Road may ask you to give ammo in order to move down the road. You will make these and many more decisions during your time with Salvation Road.

Rashid looking over supplies

There are many ways to lose this game and only one way to win. The game ends when you run out of bad guys to place on your camp, both of a players hero/survivor combination dies by having too many wounds, and when you run out of Apocalypse cards to draw. You win the game by having gathered enough supplies to pay each toll down Salvation Road. My wife and I have come one resource short twice, but it was at the expense of making some seriously head scratching game play moves. Included in the rule book are a good number of game variants to dial up or down the difficulty.

I can’t really say anything bad about this game and I really hope to get a gameplay video of this soon so you can see how it plays. This will be a game that will fly under a lot of people’s radars and I am hoping to be the one to tell you it shouldn’t be missed.

1 Response

Just wanted to leave a note to thank you for your awesome review! I’m the illustrator/graphic designer for the game, and I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to hear that the art heightened your experience of Salvation Road. May it give you many exciting game nights ahead! – VK